More on LinuxToday

Stupid tar Tricks

"One of the most common programs on Linux systems for packaging
files is the venerable tar. tar is short for tape archive, and
originally, it would archive your files to a tape device.Now,
you're more likely to use a file to make your archive. To use a
tarfile, use the command-line option -f . To create a new tarfile,
use the command-line option -c. To extract files from a tarfile,
use the option -x. You also can compress the resulting tarfile via
two methods. To use bzip2, use the -j option, or for gzip, use the
-z option.

"Instead of using a tarfile, you can output your tarfile to
stdout or input your tarfile from stdin by using a hyphen (-). With
these options, you can tar up a directory and all of its
subdirectories by using:"